In the course, we will explore the following question in this semester: How do violent conflicts emerge, escalate, and leave their mark on individuals and societies? What can psychoanalytic thought – with its sensitivity to unconscious processes, affect, and ambivalence – contribute to understanding wars, mass violence, and everyday forms of conflict? This seminar explores these questions by combining close reading of psychoanalytic texts, discussion of contemporary cases, and critical reflection on our own affective responses. Across five intensive Friday afternoon sessions, we will move from personal experiences and conceptual debates on violence to psychoanalytic perspectives on mass psychology, recognition, and reconciliation foundational psychoanalytic debates to current perspectives on recognition, trauma, and reconciliation. Each session includes interactive formats – from small group reflections to fishbowls and mapping exercises – and is complemented by optional film screenings showing how cinema stages violence, propaganda, and the possibility of forgiveness and excursions to historical sites of political violence in Berlin.